1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the estimation of a speaker's location, and more particularly to a system and method for estimating a speaker's location even in a non-stationary noise environment by preparing a sound map and using the prepared sound map information.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of technologies in diverse fields such as electronics, communications, machinery, etc., human life becomes more convenient. In diverse fields, automatic systems that move and work for humans have been developed, and such automatic systems are commonly called robots.
Some robots can recognize a human voice and take proper action according to the recognized human voice. In some cases, it is required for the robot to recognize the human voice and estimate a location from which the voice is produced.
To accomplish this, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-359767 discloses a camera device that tracks a location of a sound source in a stationary noise environment. This camera device has a drawback in that it has difficulty in tracking the sound source in a non-stationary environment.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,160,758 discloses a method of estimating the location of a sound source. But it is difficult to adapt this method to an indoor environment and to estimate the location of a speaker who produces a sound.
Accordingly, there is a demand to provide a method for estimating the location of a speaker who produces a sound by recognizing the sound even in a non-stationary noise environment.